In a fabrication process of a semiconductor device or the like, a liquid processing is carried out in which a processing liquid such as a chemical liquid, deionized water or the like is supplied to the surface of a substrate such as a semiconductor wafer (hereinafter, referred to as a wafer) so as to remove particles or contaminants attached on the substrate.
As one liquid processing apparatus to perform such a liquid processing, there is a liquid processing apparatus in which substrates are disposed one by one on a spin chuck, and a liquid processing is performed through the supply of a processing liquid to the surface of the substrate while the substrate is rotated. As an example of this kind of liquid processing apparatus, there is an apparatus in which substrates are carried to a plurality of liquid processing units capable of performing the same kind of liquid processing on a substrate by using a common substrate carrying means, and thus the substrates are sequentially replaced while liquid processing are simultaneously in the plurality of liquid processing units, so as to improve the number of processed substrates (throughput) per unit time. For example, see Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2008-34490 (refer to paragraph [0020] and FIG. 1).
The inventor of the present disclosure has investigated further improvement of throughput in a liquid processing apparatus having such a structure. In this case, when the number of mounted liquid processing units is increased, the number of substrates which can be simultaneously processed is increased, thereby improving the throughput. However, in a case where the number of liquid processing units in one liquid processing apparatus is increased as described above, for example, when there is a problem in each of the liquid processing units, a substrate carrying mechanism or a processing liquid supply system for the liquid processing units, it is required to stop the entire liquid processing apparatus, thereby increasing the loss.
Herein, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2008-258209 (e.g., FIGS. 1 to 3 and FIG. 7) discloses a coating and developing apparatus for performing a series of processing such as a coating processing of a coating liquid, a heat processing, and a developing processing after an exposure. In the coating and developing apparatus, processing blocks in which a processing unit or a substrate carrying means is disposed with the same configuration are provided to be connected to each other and the number of the processing blocks is increased/decreased, so that it is possible to design or manufacture the apparatus according to a required throughput.
However, in this configuration, when a wafer W is transferred from a carrier block S1 to a third processing block S4, wafer W is firstly transferred to a second processing block S3 by a shuttle arm G1 of a first processing block S2 and then is transferred to third processing block S4 by a shuttle arm G2 of second processing block S3. For this reason, when there is a problem in a module or a carrying means of second processing block S3, wafer W cannot be transferred to third processing block S4. Thus, although the technology disclosed in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2008-258209 is applied, it may be impossible to efficiently drive a liquid processing apparatus.